Curing the monster Some images of and considerations - Prof. Dr ...

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- 17 - which was extensively made by the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1982) in his book which first appeared in 1938 - what strikes me, if I compare the composition of this picture with that of the SCOS-logo, is the combination of the chaos symbolizing creature on the one and the hierarchical order of the state and the church on the other side. The similarity of the organigram and the dragon in the SCOS-logo is quite obvious! Whether Hobbes himself or Wenceslaus Hollar, the artist, who produced the engraving of the Leviathan in his commission knew the other picture I found, probably cannot be proved. It is a page from a Middle Ages codex of the rules of St. Benedict and shows God, the father, fishing for the Leviathan. Figure 8: Illustrated page of the Regula Benedicti, Stuttgart; Code hist. fol. 415, p. 87 V ; from Paulsen 1966 So far as its one central image is concerned it is based on Job's discourses with God in the Old Testament (Job 40, 25 ff.). On its left side it shows a ladder on which the angels are climbing up and down. Realizing that much of the rational structure in our contemporary industrial enterprises ultimately originated in monasteries and in those under the rules of St. Benedict, in particular (cf. Kieser 1986), may not only help us to perceive the dragon differently than as the traditional Christian image of the devil; it may also remind us that particularly during the Middle Ages the daily life of a monastery often enough was determined by other realities than just prayers and work (cf. Morgan 1986: 208; Burrell 1984). - Brandt (1987), in an article about the front page of Hobbes' first edition of the Leviathan, adds some further interesting insights. As this author states it, "the Leviathan is his citizens" (ibid.: 168) - an expression which leads to the idea of looking at the SCOS-dragon's scales as being built by the members of an organization. 5. SCOS, the magic dragon: Pet or fundamental? The further exploration of the two Leviathan images which I happened to find on my way to the cave of the dragon may throw a new light on the SCOS-logo - probably
- 18 - not primarily through analogy but hopefully through a kind of playful creative exploration of our own cultural experience. In revitalizing the dragon for our organizational world we may discover through this image a myth of the dragon which differs both from the pet notion of the lonely child as well as from the cosmic creature, which filled up the emptiness and exceeded the universe. If we allow the dragon to be a symbol for the unconscious similar to the serpent from which it descended, we may find ways to perceive, to understand and ultimately to live in our organizations which lead further than those which are offered by the mainstream approaches of our organizational and managerial theories. Curing the monster instead of killing it may help us to integrate into our own individual and collective lives those dimensions which traditionally are considered typhonic, named after Typhon (whom Zeus in his attempt to annihilate, imprisoned in the vulcano Aetna), i.e. our 'animalistic' nature which - when we discover it in ourselves or in others - often scares us so much that it has to be neglected. (As Typhon occasionally is regarded as the father of other monsters such as Cerberus, Hydra or Lerna (Steffen 1984: 43 f.), the acquaintance with the dragon ultimately may lead us to further discoveries.) Although I find it very encouraging that SCOS, with P. O. Berg's help, has rediscovered the dragon and chosen it as its logo, I would like to repeat on this occasion a warning which P. O. Berg already expressed: "You cannot fool a dragon - he senses tricksters miles away. Dragons are not calmed or fooled by smooth talk or manipulation but cut right through the most essential (power) relationships and (emotional) experiences" (Berg 1987a). This warning in mind, it seems to me that, so far as the presentations to our SCOS conferences as well as the contributions to our journal are concerned, we have not seriously enough started not to fool the dragon; on occasions it appears to me that there are just still too many tricksters around and that the stories and images which are presented about the dragon, i.e. about 'the ugly face' of our contemporary organizations, are far away from an attempt to elucidate where, how and to what an extent "our organizations are killing us" (Morgan 1986: 273). Much too often
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